ed sharply and led across the
river.

Along the lane is the chase led. There was something in the grim
silence with which Milton and Bacon rode in the lead that startled the
spy's guilty heart. He pushed his horse unmercifully, hoping to
discourage his pursuers.

Milton's blood was up now, and bringing the flat of his hand down on
the proud neck of his colt--the first blow he ever struck him, he
shouted--

"Get out o' this, Mark!"

The magnificent animal threw out his chin, his ears laid flat back, he
seemed to lower and lengthen, his eyes took on a wild glare. The air
whizzed by Milton's ears. A wild exultation rose in his heart. All the
stories of rides and desperate men he had ever read came back in a
vague mass to make his heart thrill.

Mark's terrific pace steadily ate up the intervening distance, and
Milton turned the corner and thundered down the decline at the very
heels of the fugitive.

"Hey! Hold on there!" Milton shouted, as he drew alongside and passed
the fellow. "Hold on there!"

"Git out o' my way!" was the savage answer.

"Stop right here!" commanded Milton, reining Mark in the way of the
other horse.

The fellow struck Mark. "Git out o' my way!" he yelled.

Milton seized the bit of the other horse and held it. The fellow raised
his arm and struck him twice before Bacon came thundering up.

"H'yare! Damn yeh--none o' that!"

He leaped from his horse, and running up, tore the rider from his
saddle in one swift effort. The fellow struggled fiercely.

"Let go o' me, 'r I'll kill yeh!"

Bacon growled something inarticulate as he cuffed the man from side to
side, shook him like a rag, and threw him to the ground. He lay there
dazed and scared, while Bacon caught his horse and tied it to a tree.

He came back to the fellow as he was rising, and again laid his
bear-like clutch upon him.

"Who paid you to do this?" he demanded, as Councill and the others came
straggling up, their horses panting with fatigue.

The fellow struck him in the face. The old man lifted him in the air
and dashed him to the ground with a snarling cry. His gesture was like
that of one who slams a biting cat upon the floor. The man did not
rise.

"You've killed him!" cried Milton.

"Damn 'im--I don't care!"

The man was about thirty-five years of age, a slender, thin-faced man
with tobacco-stained whiskers. The fellows knew him for a sneaking
fellow, but they plead for him.

"Don't hit 'im agin, Bacon. He's